


Floating Through A Stone Wall

by RunWithWolves



Series: 30 Days of Cupcake [25]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alt-Carmilla, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 11:10:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8283808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunWithWolves/pseuds/RunWithWolves
Summary: Somehow, the most comforting sound to Carmilla became the thump thump of Laura's heartbeat. It was a constant for every second she lived in the dorm room with her tiny naive roommate. Even as she walks a trusting Laura to the Dean's mansion, the thump thump still drives a constant beat as Laura smiles up at her and makes new plans to save the girls. Carmilla never expected the heartbeat to follow her through every moment. A story of alt-Carmilla.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Writing the day after an act drop is the hardest because my brain is all over the place. I wrote 3 fics that never made it more than a page each today with a different concept each. Then, in my panic to get you something, this flowed out. 
> 
> i just can't get the twisted feeling from alt Carmilla out of my gut. i had such a visceral and unexpected reaction of sadness and hurt and uncomfort while watching her in act 3. because while alt carmilla has no future, she has all the memories of her past. 
> 
> And I couldn't get the title line out of my head with all it implies.

Somewhere, there is a world where all that mattered was a single heartbeat. 

Carmilla curls her fingers around Laura’s biceps, hands trembling but still so careful not to press too tightly. Something in her chest screams not to do this. Not to go through with it. But it is quickly quieted by the other voices. The oldest voices. 

The ones that screams of darkness and blood and fates worse than death. 

So Carmilla just puts a smirk on her face and waltzes Laura past Will as she walks through the front door of Maman’s mansion. He grins back, fangs poking from his lips as he leers at them. Pushing Laura on, Carmilla is careful to put her body between them. 

This action alone is enough to get Laura talking again and she speaks in hushed tones, “So what’s the plan here? We going to pretend to offer me as bait so that your mother starts talking?” Carmilla can hear Laura’s heartbeat flutter in excitement, “We should have strapped my camera on somewhere. Like a sneaky expose.”

Carmilla can’t say anything, her voice clogged in her throat as she listens to Laura’s heart. 

Thump. Thump. 

There was no heartbeat in the coffin. Just the thought sends icy shards racing down Carmilla’s spine and her feet keep going. No one escapes her mother. No one ever escapes. 

Laura is doomed anyway. 

“Make sure you don’t pull me out before we get the goods,” Laura mutters, “I mean, I wish we’d maybe talked about this plan a little before you grabbed me but I can do improvisation. We got this. Partners in crime right? Saving girls. Being heroes.”

Laura cranes her head around to give Carmilla a grin. Light and hopeful and the big brown eyes above it are the same ones that grew watery when Carmilla spoke about Elle. Nodding, Carmilla swallows and prays that her mother would pod-people Laura quickly. Anything to get that trusting smile off of Laura’s face. 

The smile that trusts her. 

So Carmilla shoves her and they walk into the office. 

“Mircalla,” her mother says, looking up from her desk with something glinting in her dark eyes, “It’s nice to see that you’re not entirely incompetent. Excellent work in procuring the girl.”

Thump. Thump.

Laura’s heartbeat is steady. Fear nowhere to be found as she remains locked in Carmilla’s grip. 

“We know what you’re doing,” Laura says, chin up, “With those girls. Kidnapping them every twenty years and forcing Carmilla to help you do it.”

Her mother laughs, “Forcing? Darling. I had to send nothing but a small warning before Mircalla was quite happily trussing you and walking you over here.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Laura says. 

The Dean’s gaze hardens, “No,” she says, “I don’t think you are. But you’re hardly the one that matters.” Then the Dean’s gaze switches to Carmilla and everything in her wants to simply curl up. Instead, she rolls her eyes and shoves Laura forward.

“Just get it done,” Carmilla says, “I’m tired of this.”

So tired. 

Thump. Thump.

Carmilla’s chest burns with unshed tears. Even now, Laura isn’t afraid. Still trusting even as Carmilla hands her over. 

“Very well,” her mother says, “I’ve admit, the gnat has grown tiresome in her buzzing.”

“Why do it?” Laura cuts in, “Why do any of it? The girls. Making them loopy and sending them back only to take them again? Why do any of this?”

“That, my dear,” the Dean says, “Is a very good question. One that you’ll experience, shall we say, first hand, soon enough.” Pulling a syringe from her drawer, she takes two steps to Laura’s side and hovers the needle over her skin. As the Dean searches for a vein, Laura’s eyes leapt to Carmilla’s, the briefest flicker of panic in her heartbeat. 

Carmilla can do nothing but stare back. Face blank. 

Thump. Thump.

Somehow Laura’s heartbeat settles as she watched Carmilla. Sneaking a glance at the Dean, Laura takes a deep breath and nods when she meets Carmilla’s gaze again. As the needle pierces her skin, Laura mouths the words, “I trust you.”

Then she is gone, passed out on the floor as the Dean removes the syringe. 

Unaware that Carmilla can no longer even speak as her throat clogs up. The burn rips through her chest but Carmilla has to remind herself that it was nothing to the cold fear that came with darkness and blood.

This is it. Laura is gone. All that's left is just another pod person obsessed with parties and themselves. Carmilla nods, gathering herself as her mother turns away and sits at her desk again. “Take the little moppet downstairs,” The Dean says, “No point returning her to those dorms anyway. We’ll hold her until we need her. Do make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.”

Nodding, Carmilla lifts Laura in her arms. Ears somehow still straining. 

Thump. Thump. 

She listens to the beat going on and on as she lowers Laura into the straw of one of the cleanest cells. The thump continues all night long. Each one dragging in her ears and reminding her of the emptiness in her own chest. Each one driving the Dean’s injection further through her body. Each one a countdown until the last. 

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Thirty three thousand and six hundred and two beats until Laura wakes up. She pops up suddenly and stand, swaying on her feet in a way that is hauntingly familiar to Carmilla. Dozens of girls. Dozens of friends. All the same sway. 

Yet the others did not have a heartbeat that was more familiar to Carmilla than the long-forgotten memory of what her heart had once been. 

Laura sways and nods her head to an invisible beat as her hands sway slightly. 

Rubbing her hands on her thighs, Carmilla can do nothing but watch and remind herself over and over and over that this isn’t Laura anymore. That this is for the best. That she will be safe and Laura was doomed anyway. This isn’t Laura anymore. 

Laura sees her and squeals, giving her a fast hug and then trying to pull Carmilla to her feet to dance with her. 

Carmilla refuses. 

She spends another fifty thousand and three hundred and four beats watching Laura sway, giggling as she paces the tiny cell. But on the next beat, Laura does something she’s never seen before. 

Laura catches sight of Betty in the cage next door and immediately rushes to the edge of her cell. Her old roommate is sleeping, body twitching as she loses herself to the nightmares of girls in blood that come even when whatever Maman does with them is close. No-one can escape the dreams. 

They’re hardly girls at all at this point.

But Laura reaches out, fingers softly waking Betty from the nightmares as she speaks nonsensical comforting sounds. When Betty opens her eyes, chest heaving, Laura says nothing. She just takes Betty’s hands through the bars and holds tight. 

Thump. Thump.

It only takes a few heartbeats before Betty smiles and giggles, lost again to the party fever that seems to overtake every girl her mother chooses. One day, Carmilla would like to know why exactly her mother needs these girls so party-crazy. Today she can only watch as Laura returns the giggle and the two girls return to their feet to bob their heads to an invisible music. 

But Laura reached out. 

And when Betty demands that they dance, Laura busts out a dorky dance move that is more Laura than anything she’s seen. 

Pod-peopled or not. 

Eventually Laura grows tired and she yawns, arms above her head with a lazy smile on her lips. She scans the cell and her eyes grow bright as spots Carmilla again. Beelining right towards her, Laura has her head in Carmilla’s lap before Carmilla can even move. 

Frozen, Carmilla counts heartbeats until Laura slips into the slower rhythm that comes to her in sleep. Carmilla’s hand drops down to softly stroke her hair. When Laura shifts slightly, her hand freezes again as the heartbeat tucked against her leg picks up slightly, “All part of the plan,” Laura mutters, “right, Carm?”

Carmilla has to press a hand to her mouth to hold the tears back. 

She doesn’t touch Laura’s hair again. 

The basement is nearly as dark as the coffin was but the air doesn’t smell like blood down here and there is a heartbeat in her ears. 

Ninety-two thousand eight hundred and thirty two beats later Laura gets up and Carmilla locks herself outside the cell, refusing to go back in. Yet, she can’t bring herself to leave. Instead she gets a stool and just watches as, somehow, Laura manages to peek through the fog of her mother’s party-brain. Each instant cracking her just a little more until Carmilla wonders how broken a person can stand to be.

When the Dean sweeps into the cells and chastises Carmilla for bothering to feed the prisoners, Laura yells out, “That’s not very nice” before returning to her dance. 

When Laura says, “I’ve got to go to the party,” she immediately spins around to find Carmilla and asks, “Would you come with me, Carm? Please?”

“I don’t think so, cupcake,” is the only thing Carmilla can choke out. 

“But it wouldn’t be fun without you,” Laura says.

Carmilla shakes her head, “This isn’t that kind of story.”

“Sure it is!” Laura just grins, “why not?”

Carmilla can’t give her an answer and Laura goes back to her bobbing. 

When Carmilla manages to nod off and wakes to nightmares that are dark and cold and bloody, Laura is peering between the slots of her cell. Silent as she watches Carmilla. “It’s gonna be okay,” she says. 

All Carmilla can do is stare back, holding the moment until Laura giggles and falls away, leaving Carmilla’s face to crumple.  
Fifteen thousand and forty one heartbeats later, Laura comes back, “You wanna talk about it?” she asks. 

She shouldn’t.

But she does. After all, what harm is there in talking to a pod-person? 

Even one with big brown eyes who never looks away.

When one of the goons comes to round up the girls, Laura stumbles in her arms and Carmilla finds that Laura’s heartbeat practically roars in her ears as Laura says, “I trust you,” and then “You don’t smell good, Carm. Make sure you’re taking care of yourself,” and finally, “clean the shower drain after the party, kay?”

For a moment, Carmilla wants to poof them both away to dorm rooms and yellow pillows. 

Before she can push Laura away, the Dean sweeps past her and says, “You’ve done well this time, sweetheart. Perhaps you’d like to join us?” She pats Carmilla lightly on the head, “A reward for your service. I have been so worried about your loyalty these last few decades that it’s a relief to see that I don’t have to punish you again. It would be troubling to see you throw everything away for nothing, after all, the moppet could never love a girl like you.”

Coffins and blood and darkness hang in the air between her words. 

So Carmilla can say nothing as they walk the girls down a tunnel, Laura coming along easily with her fingers locked between Carmilla’s. She never expected this to be the way they first held hands. 

Thump. Thump. 

Laura’s heartbeat is still steady as Carmilla’s eyes widen when they appear in a large pit underneath what she can recognize as the Lustig building. 

Thump. Thump. 

Laura’s heartbeat is still steady as Carmilla walks her to the edge on Maman’s request. With a quirk of her finger, the Dean tells Carmilla to move away. She hesitates for just a moment, looking at Laura again and trying to figure out what exactly is about to happen. Laura’s hand squeezes her own and it would be so easy to superspeed them both away.

She leans in and presses a gentle kiss to Laura’s cheek even as the girl bobs beside her. 

Thump! Thump!

The heartbeat picks up for just a second.

“Mircalla.” Her mother calls, “Back away. Now. I’d hate for you to get caught in the sacrifice.”

She misses the word sacrifice in her haste to listen to what her mother said. Down here, in the dark, the coffin feels closer than ever. Fear is prickling its way into every crevice of her vertebrae. Closing her eyes, Carmilla takes a deep breath to calm herself. Even though she doesn’t want them to, her ears pick up their favourite sounds. 

Thump. Thump. 

Her eyes fly open the moment the word sacrifice truly registers in her brain and they land instantly on Laura. She is still standing there. Just watching. Watching as her mother and the goons perform some ritual around her until Laura is bathed in an eerily golden light that curls the hair on Carmilla’s neck more than the coffin ever could. 

And she realizes how wrong she was. 

Thump. Thump. 

But Carmilla is broken. Fear curled under her skin for so long that for a moment, she doesn’t move. 

Thump. Thump.

It’s a moment too long. 

The next thing she knows the light is everywhere, bright and strong and Laura is being pulled towards its grasp as though she has no choice in the matter. 

Thump.

Carmilla runs. Runs as some kind of monster that she’d never imagined looms from the shadows to form its own sun. 

Thump. 

The light dances as Laura walks away from her and Carmilla’s eyes widen at the things she can see lurking in the light. Eyes. Faces. Familiar. Fake friends and long lost loves alike. 

Thump.

She will not lose another to that light. 

Thump.

Her eyes burn with tears unshed as Carmilla keeps running, shoving the goons aside to try and grab Laura to pull her away. Away from that light and all the girls who lived inside it. 

Thump.

Just as she reaches the edge, Betty already tumbling behind her, Laura turns her head back to meet Carmilla’s gaze and something flickers across Laura’s face. Something that looks like a crinkled nose and firey eyes before it’s whisked away again as the light pushes harder.

Thump.

The tears burn when they fall across her face. 

Thump. 

Will grabs her arm to pull her back from throwing herself over the edge as Laura falls. The last flicker of light on her face disappearing as she tumbles past where Carmilla can’t see. 

Thump. 

The heartbeat rings on and she strains to hear every note. 

Thump. 

“I didn’t know!” she screams, as though Laura can somehow absolve her of this. Something in her laughs hollowly. Of course she did. She didn’t know but something in her did. 

Thump.

Thump.

Thump. 

Nothing. 

She waits. 

She waits. 

And waits. 

Will lets her arm go as the light dies and Carmilla falls to her knees as the Dean walks past her without a backward glance, just wiping her hands lightly on a handkerchief. 

Carmilla waits. The silence pulls and tears, reminding her of the emptiness in her own chest as her ears twitch with every sound. Each one sounding like something it’s not as she searches the bottom of the pit for any noise at all. 

She hears an “I trust you,” on the wind and waits to shatter. 

It never comes. 

And Carmilla realizes that she was already broken. 

It takes four months before she hears the first whisper. Passing through the library with a stack of food in her arms to leave in the stacks for the ginger scientist as her penance, Carmilla’s head snaps up.

Laura’s voice drifts through the stone walls, “No. You don’t understand. I fought so hard to fix this place - we lost so much trying to save it.”

For a second, she almost thinks that she can see Laura curled up on the ground in a fuzzy blanket with tear tracks on her face. 

Carmilla drops the bag and runs. 

She comes back two days later, the voice an impossible lure. Carmilla paces, prowling the stacks without ever getting too far away from the place she heard the voice the first time or too close to where the ginger Laura once called friend has set up their lab. 

Then she hears it.

Thump. Thump.

Faint and distant. Like something in a dream. 

Carmilla practically tears the library apart trying to find it. The thump a continuing beat in her ears that comes to settle loudest in the room with a couple of beat-up chairs and an old worn video camera. Occasionally, she catches a whisper of words.

“Carm.”

“Craft supplies.”

“Vending machines.”

“Harry Potter.”

She knows she’s going insane and she doesn’t care. Her mother calls and eventually, Carmilla stops bothering to answer. The only thing that matters is the thump thump in her ears that can drown out the silence in her chest. Her eyes grow dark as she refuses to sleep except in fitful bouts and she only remembers to feed herself when the thump thump starts to grow dim as she slips into unconsciousness. 

Sometimes, when Laura speaks, Carmilla answers back. She speaks to the ceiling and the stone walls that refuse to reveal their secrets as to where Laura is hiding. She begs with apologies and reads Harry Potter aloud and creates conversations off of simple two word phrases that slip between the cracks in the walls. 

Carmilla knows she’s going crazy and she doesn’t care. 

Every sound that’s not the thump of Laura’s heart makes her twitch, afraid that if she loses the beat again then she will never find it. 

Weeks must pass before someone barges in, Mattie slams into the library and practically drags Carmilla outside. She grants Carmilla’s growing insanity only a passing thought as she patiently listens for the thump thump that Carmilla insists is there. 

Mattie hears nothing. 

She forces Carmilla out of the library and into the real world. Forces her to eat and sleep and do what Maman asks. 

Neither mention that she did the same thing once before. When the Dean found Carmilla after she left the coffin. 

So Carmilla eats and stalks and does what she needs to, eventually teaching herself to ignore the thump thump that once lingered in the library.

“You’re not real.” she whispers, flipping through books on psychology as Mattie watches her nervous twitches try not to spill a wine glass of blood.

“That’s right kitty cat,” Mattie says, “Just you and me.”

As though Mattie knows that her ears can’t stop listening, she practically follows Carmilla around to fill the air with words and plans and evenings that would have once been fun.

Still, the silence follows her like the heart not beating her chest. 

Every moment free of the thump. 

Sometimes, Carmilla goes back to the library on the days when the pain is worst. When the need is worse. Just to try and not listen. Prove that she’s not listening. Telling the stone walls that what lies beneath them isn’t real. 

The only real sounds are the ones of the ginger scientist scampering away. 

“You’re not real.” she cries to the ceiling even as she swears that she can see a flicker of Laura curled up asleep in a chair and everything in her longs to brush the hair from her face.

Sometimes she makes it out on her own. Sometimes Mattie has to come get her. 

Mattie is already following her as Carmilla races to the library, her mother’s latest orders freshly completed to only leave a silence that is far too loud. All day, the library has been pulling on her chest like never before. Her straining ears thinking they can hear a heartbeat even when they’re not in the library. 

Today, she’ll prove them wrong. 

So she walks in the door and her throat clogs when the thump thump seems louder than ever before. As though it has somehow escape the stone to stand beside her. Pinpointable instead of everywhere. So Carmilla refuses to look at it. 

“Carm,” she can practically hear Laura’s voice.

“No. no no no no no no no,” is all she can say.

Mattie walks in to cover the thump thump and Carmilla, with the loudest thump yet in her ears that is faster than she remembers, finally lets her words go. Words of misplaced trust. And friends long dead. Deserved deaths and irrational loves. The girl who listened and tried to change the story. 

How could a girl like that ever believe in a girl like her.

“But I did.” Laura’s voice is closer than ever.

Even as the litany of no’s falls from Carmilla’s mouth again, Laura is somehow right there. “You are dead. You are not real.” Carmilla repeats the words she has taught herself to say. “You are just a dream floating through a stone wall.”

Laura touches her hand and one last “no” slips from Carmilla’s lips. Everything in her tense and screaming and so afraid. So so afraid. The icy fingers of her mother long gone to be replaced by the image of a soft face in a golden glow and brown eyes that Carmilla sees turn hard and angry every night in her dreams. No forgiveness there. 

No more trust from Laura Hollis.

She doesn’t deserve it anyway.

But Laura brings Carmilla’s hand to her chest and, suddenly, Carmilla can feel what she has always heard. 

Thump. Thump.

**Author's Note:**

> ONLY ONE WEEK LEFT OF THIS CUPCAKES! for me, it's crunch time. 
> 
> This series only exists because of your amazing support through comment, kudos and [ tumblr stop-ins ](http://ariabauer.tumblr.com/). You've all been so fantastically epic and I'm ridiculously and continually flabbergasted by the strength and kindness of this fandom and its creampuffs
> 
> This is the twenty-fifth story of '30 Days of Cupcake' where I'll be posting a unique Carmilla fanfic every weekday for 30 days. Stay stupendous. Aria.


End file.
